Digital Marketing Guide - Digital Fewsure

Google Products SEO Guide - How to Rank Better with Google Base

A Short Guide on How to Improve your Products Ranking for Google Product Search. Google Base

Google's Product Search is the popular search engine's tool for finding specific products online.  The tool allows you to compare prices, see features of the product, read reviews, and choose between various vendors before making a purchasing decision.

Many businesses have e-commerce driven websites that feature their products, prices, attributes, etc.  And yes, these products can be found through basic Google search.  But Google also allows e-commerce companies to upload their products to an software application called The Google Merchant Center(Google Base). 

Google gives room for businesses to directly link their online inventory updates to their Google Merchant account.  This avoids the complicated and time consuming act of having to update both at seperate times. 

Whether you are a beginning user of Google base or an advanced participant, you are probably wondering, "how can my product rank better in Google Product Search?"

Here are a few steps that you can take to improve your product's ranking on Google Product Search:

TItle Tags are Still Important

Title tags are just as vital in product search as they are in regular SEO.  Your Title Tags must be keyword friendly and relevant to your product.  Keep them short and simple, (no more than 65 characters) and try to be niche in your selections.  Remember, you are up against millions of other vendors, it is important that you find some niche key phrases.  For example: if you are selling handbags and your handbag is purple and white.  You can as specific as: "Purple and White Handbag for Women."  And you can get even more niche than that. Either way make sure your title tags are SEO friendly.

Price

Price is a key factor in your ranking because the lower your price is in comparison to your competitors the more likely you are going to rank towards the top.  That being said don't lower your price initially and add funky last minute charges to the end of a user's purchase.  That wil just upset the consumer. (Common Sense).  But keep competitive prices.  If you have a more luxurious and pricey product than your competition, then include words like luxurious in your product descriptions and title tags.

Uploading Data

Google asks that the user uploads data on their products and allows you to upload data to various data fields.  Once you have an account you will better understand what I am talking about.  Update more data to these fieds and provide a nice amount of information for Google.  This has been proven to improve your product rankings.

Fresh Data

Google actually offers this advice to all vendors that use Google Base.  Giving Google fresh data (updated product feeds) is a good way to improve your rankings.  Set the Google scheduler to crawl your site often and update your product/data feed accordinly.

Positive Reviews

Your products should be reviewed in various places on the net.  If you are new to the e-commerce world and don't have a very large brand to play with then start by asking your peers to write honest reviews on your products.  In Google's ranking algorithm they sense whether or not you have a lot of positive reviews or negative reviews. The more positive reviews your product has the better it will rank.  If you can get "Google Products" reviews (reviews on Googles Site).  They are much more valuable then a 3rd party site.  That being said, 3rd party sites are still important enough that you should pursue them. 

If you want to get a product review you can look into some popular product review sites:

Shopzilla.com

Pricegrabber.com

Mouthshut.com

readprint.com

There are many more out there, just do a basic search and you can locate more.  If you are new to Google Products and want to learn about getting your products in their index, watch the video below.

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Twitter Symbols - What do They Mean? Part 1

What are All These Twitter Symbols?  How to Use Twitter Symbols for Networking Guide

There are a lot of people that are starting to use Twitter and do not yet understand what all the symbols mean.  How do we use these symbols to our advantage?  Read below to get a basic understanding of what Twitter symbols can do. 

@ 

The @ symbol is used to reply to another user on Twitter or reference to another user or message on Twitter.  This is great for talking to people or companies directly on Twitter.  You show that you are going out of your way to be personal.  In B2B, this can be a good tool for developing social conversation directly.

For example:

@Socialexpert your article on social media best strategies was great!

or

cfictum @jenniferkels read this page on twitter symbols www.biturlsls.com

# - referred to as a hashtag

This symbol is used to designate a topic.  You would use this to maintain a conversation on one topic.  For example.   If I wanted to talk about the health care bill I could start a topic and label it in this manner -

What do you think we should do about #healthcare? www.bitourlsw.com

This # tag would allow others to search for health care and locate my conversation.  Also, if I wanted to engage friends, all they have to do it repeat the #healthcare and the conversation will be linked to all users that are engaged with that specific conversation.  This is very beneficial for search visibility.  Also if you want to get a reaction from people on your topic it is important that you use a # tag because it will organize the conversation and encourage others to jump in.

RT

RT stands for Re-Tweet.  This is just a way of giving another user credit for their tweet (posted message).

If your Twitter name is kylek and I liked your tweet on micro-blogging I would tweet:

RT @kylek (follwed by kylek's tweet)

so

RT @kylek Ways to improve your micro-blogging strategy -  www.biturla.com

The RT tag is great for showing people and companies that you care about what they have to say.  Twitter is no different than other social media in that it is a place for 2 way conversation.  Back and forth communication is important.  Don't forget to give some other businesses and people credit for their great posts or tweets.

Mobile Web Page - Best Strategies Part 1

Make My Website Mobile - Guide on How to Make your Mobile Web Page 

Part 1

Mobile internet browsing is beginning to become a normality for smartphone owners and the number of mobile web users continues to rise. (Predicted that 975 million people will be using mobile internet for social purposes by 2012) source

Researchers predict mobile internet usage will see it's largest increase in 2010.  So whether you are a small business or a large corporation you must make sure that your website is ready.  If you own a smartphone already there is a good chance that you tried visiting multiple sites online.  Sometimes those sites load correctly and are easy to navigate.  And other times those sites are scattered and don't fit your mobile screens format.

The truth is, most web owners are unaware of their websites complications on a mobile browser.  Or some of them just don't care because they don't feel that mobile users are visiting their site.  So what are some tips for making your website mobile friendly?  How do you make your website mobile?

Actually it is not nearly as hard as you think it is.  A simple way to handle it would be to connect with a mobile adaptability company like Mobi Thinking.  They will make sure your site is mobile ready and equipped with all the features necessary for easy user navigation.  They even have a tool that tells you how mobile ready your site is: Ready.mobi

As long as your site has a CSS (cascading style sheet - CSS Tutorial) that uploads page information to the browser you can be mobile ready.

Over the next couple of days we will cover the steps you should consider to make an effective mobile page:

STEP 1

• For now, keep flash, java, and other plug-ins from your mobile page.  Until 4G technology is mainstream users will not be happy waiting for pages to load.  Remember they are on the go, the shorter and more simple, the better. 

photo courtesy of http://img.cellular-news.com/

Mobile and Social Media Glossary 2010

Social Media and Mobile Driven Society is Adding New Words to our Vocabulary 

With the emerging mobile and social market comes new language!  As with any other advancement or popular topic, humans are making up words to describe new actions that take place.  In the recent past words such as bling have been added to the Webster's dictionary.  The bling fad was started by rappers who wrote beautiful poetry about jewerly on their songs.  Now with mobile and social media BOOMING in the U.S., people have taken it upon themselves to start making up words and phrases that shorten their explanations of actions.  The big players thus far have been:

Tweet - Message on Twitter

Freinded - When someone becomes your friend on Facebook

Sexting - Text messaging steamy thoughts to your significant other

Many Many more that we will cover very soon: But for now check out this list below

  Advertising Age has a great article on this matter - Access the link - Ad Age - Social Media and Mobile Glossary Terms 2010

photo courtesty of :  http://andrewgrill.com/images/mobile-social-networking.jpg

Google and Internet Security Issues with China

Google Publicly Announces the Issues with China Hackers

Late last night, Google announced that they would be putting an end to some of the security blocks that exist within their Chinese search engine.  Bascially, Google was asked by the government to restrict some pages from their index in order to prevent the Chinese people from accessing certain content.  If you didn't already know, the Chinese government has a lot of control over the content it's people sees.  Public TV and the internet are monitored heavily by the government.  With the emergence of technology, many young Chinese entrepreneurs have began to work their way out of poverty and into economic wealth.  Most of these successful entrepreneurs have joined other activists and are speaking out about thier country's policies and procedures.  Of course, the Chinese government does not take well to protesters.  Therefore, to place itself in a safe haven, Google agreed to banned certain web pages from their index.

THAT BAN IS NOW BEING LIFTED!

Why?  Recently Google discovered that some Chinese hackers had been targeting the system to retrieve the GMAIL accounts of popular Chinese activitsts and other activists.  This of course, is completly illegal and Google is firing back.  "We believe in free speech," says Google who has moved forward with the bold decision of lifting some of the censorship.  However, this bold move may actually force Google to leave China.  With Chinas's emerging economy, this could be a big blow to the major engine.  Below is an excerpt from their announcement taken from: Google Blog.

 

 "Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

 

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised."

photo courtesy of http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/img/google-beta.jpg

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What is a Domain Name? - A Simple Overview

Domain Names are Born

 

Domain names were born to provide humans with HUMAN language identifiers, instead of long programming identifiers.

What is a domain name? 

 

Domain name definition – an IP address in natural language

 

The domain name system (DNS) was constructed to allow numerous expressions in natural language for the IP addresses

 

Domain Name System

 

.com – commercial

 

 .edu – educational

 

 .gov – government based

 

 

OTHERS - .mil,.net, ,org, ,int, .us, .mobi, .biz, and many more

photo courtesty of:  http://www.getentrepreneurial.com/images/domain-name.jpg

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What is an IP Address? - A Simple Overview

 

IP Address – What is It?

 

In order for all computers to function on a network or internet platform, they need to each have their own identity.  If two computers shared the same identity, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) would have no idea which identity to send the messages to and from.  Therefore, a identity system had to be set up.  Every computer on the internet had to have its own address.

 

IP Address definition – a 32 bit number that appears as a series of four separate numbers marked off by periods – used to define and differentiate the identities of computers.

 

Each of the four numbers can be between 0-255.

 

There has been a IP version 6 developed that uses 128 bit addresses.  This allows for up to 1 quadrillion addresses!

photo courtesty of: www.internet101.org

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What is TCP? Transmission Control Protocol - A Simple Overview

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Internet Protocol (IP) – What is It? Why Does it Matter?

 

Transmission Control Protocol definition: forms the connections among sender and receiver web computers to ensure the packets sent by one computer are received in the same sequence by the other, without any missing packets.

 

Basically it is produces the guidebook(TCP) to direct tourists(Packets of information) around the city in the most efficient manner.

 

Internet Protocol definition: Is the internet’s addressing formula that is responsible for the delivery of the packets.

 

TCP and IP work as one mechanism

 

 

Before Transmission Control Protocol existed there was no universal method for breaking up the messages and sending them to the correct location.  Picture packet switching (breaking up messages into small packets – making them easier to send) as a stamp; you can have a bunch of stamps to send out messages but if you don’t have a post office or set system to deliver those stamped messages, you are missing an important part of the messaging equation.  TCP is the post office to packet switching.  When packet switching was invented there was no universal post office to direct those packet switches to their final, final destination.

 

 

One can divide TCP/IP into four separate parts

 

1.      Network Interface Layer: This layer puts the packets of information on networks and sends them from the networks. The network could be a LAN (Ethernet) or any other network technology.

 

2.      Internet Layer: addresses, packages, and routes the messages on the INTERNET

 

3.      Transport Layer: provides communication with applications, sequencing the packets to and from the applications

 

4.      Application Layer: a bunch of applications that are given the ability to access the lower applications.

photo courtesy of : http://www.maran.com 

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What is Packet Switching? - Simple Overview and Guide

Packet Switching  - What Is It?

 

Packet Switching involves slicing digital messages into discrete units (packets), sending the packets different communication paths, and finally reassembling those communication packets at their final destination.

 

What Did Packet Switching do For Us?

 

The internet/network uses packet switching to send and receive signals.  Packet switching made the process of sending and receiving online data faster and more efficient.  Before packet switching transformation of communication or data was done on a one-to-one circuit.  Once that one-to-one circuit is complete the next stage of communication can develop.  This made the process of exchanging information lengthy and sometimes difficult.  In fact, most of the time these one-to-one exchanges were exploit the capacity of the communication channel.  Pauses and waiting times made over 70% of the communication network capacity useless.  With packet switching, those pauses and or waiting periods were unaccounted for.  The capacity of the network being used was 100% all of the time.  Making the communication channel work more proficiently. 

Imagine a car that got 10 miles per gallon…one day that car woke up and now it gets 1,000 miles per gallon and little was changed on the car as a whole.  Packet switching was this effective.

 

The Timeline for packet switching goes as follows:

 

1.      You send a message – Text Message – In letter form

2.      This message is broken down into packets, appended to each packet are codes that indicate the source address and a destination address. – 00110010 00111010 10110011

3.      Instead of being sent directly to the destination address, the packets travel from computer to computer until they reach their destination.  The computers involved are referred to as routers.

4.      A routing algorithm ensures that each packet takes the best possible path to its final destination. 

 

There is no dedicated circuit which means that packet switching can make use of any left over capacity that originally was being taken up by pauses.  This allows packet switching to make use of nearly all communication capacity.  If one path is busy, messages take another path that is not at full capacity.  This enabled multiple people to be on one network and working efficiently at the same time.

photo courtesy of : http://viadrina.euv-frankfurt-o.de/~sk/Pub/20c3/packet-switching.JPG   

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What is XML? - Simple Overview of XML

What Does XML stand For? 

XML definition : Extensible Markup Language – a set of technological communication standards that make it possible for computer programs to talk with one another without extensive programming.

 

It was developed by W3C – World Wide Consortium.

 

What is the difference between XML and HTML?

 

HTML is responsible for controlling the look and feel of the content on a website.

 

XML is designed to describe the content on the page – the date and information

 

Take a look at the coding for a brief model of a XML document:

 

<?xml version=”2.0”?>

<letter>

<to>William</to>

<from>Jake</from>

<body>Everyone loves to dance around in a circle</body>

</letter>

 

·         Notice how none of the coding tells about how the information is displayed.  The content is the focus.  In HTML their would be code that deals with font color and text size.  XML does not comprise with these types of descriptions. 

 

What is XML used for?

 

XML can be used to define a database of consumer information.  For example <age>, <income>, etc.  And it is “extensible” which allows the display of the information to be determined by the user.  This also allows web designers to change information in a database, and see the format changed on the internet or intranet.

 

 Companies can use XML to store inter-corporate information such as payroll, quarterly financial reports, client accounts, etc.  As soon as this information is changed or altered it can be seen by all within the company intranet.  HTML makes it very difficult to change or alter database information of because the tags are limited and pre-determined.  With XML, tags allow information to be displayed selectively and information can be altered into new formats.

photo courtesy of spycomponents.com

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